Paul Hoover's Poetry Blog

This site is for posting poems, essays about poetry, and thoughts about the art. Francis Picabia: "What I like least about others is myself." W.G. Sebald: "The greater the distance, the clearer the view."

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Stephen Ratcliffe: Reading the Unseen

Stephen Ratcliffe has published a Shakespeare study with Counterpath Press of Denver, which will issue Beyond the Court Gate: Selected Poems of Nguyen Trai, edited and translated by Nguyen Do and me, in Spring 2010.

Reading the Unseen: (Offstage) Hamlet is now out from Counterpath Press. 216 pages. ISBN 978-1933996141. $17.95. Order from Counterpath (http://www.counterpathpress.org/aupgs/ratcliffe/ratcliffe.html) or Small Press Distribution (http://www.spdbooks.org/).

"Stephen Ratcliffe’s beautiful meditation on what does not happen in Hamlet offers a fascinating view of the play, focusing on the unperformable but nevertheless essential action, recounted events, the actions that words create and that remain words, but that also enable and explain the business of the drama. This book will be compulsive reading for anyone who cares about Shakespeare." — Stephen Orgel

"Stephen Ratcliffe’s new study of Hamlet is nothing short of a small miracle. A poet’s 'language book’ . . . for all seasons and all readers.” — Marjorie Perloff

"What's unseen but said's as consequent as what's apparent but unspoken, as Stephen Ratcliffe shows in this beguilingly original study. Shakespeare's words perform for an inner eye we overlook at pleasure's peril." — Charles Bernstein

“This book does the best job I have seen at showing just how Shakespeare gave shape to what we now know as the modern imagination. Written by a poet, and a very powerful one, it will benefit anyone who has ever looked at the Prince of Denmark and wondered Who’s there?” — Ron Silliman